The HOPEFUL TRAVELLER Page 22

  What it was that stayed her hand, she could not have said. True she was lonely, but she was beginning to realize that to some extent this was a constant state; she would always be different things to different people, a sum that didn’t quite add up. And yet she felt that there was hidden within her some indefinable and very precious thing that had nothing to do with character or personality, something that burnt still and bright beyond the surge and swell of emotion. It seemed to her that of all the people she had known, Adam had recognized this little radiance that was hers alone, and for this he would always be dearer to her than anyone else.

  And so, in fact, she did wait for him, showing a patience that she had never exhibited before. With others, she was less patient. She found Mr. and Mrs. Norman more irritating than ever, but she felt that she must see them from time to time now that Cath was in Austria.

  Cath was in love with an American psychiatrist who had the answer to Europe’s long neurosis. If only he could have seen Hitler in the thirties one felt that Europe might have been spared its great traumatic experience. He had the answer to other things, too. Cath wrote, ‘I now realize how stupid and meaningless the old morality is, and how important it is to free oneself of the concept of guilt. Love-making should be as natural as taking a bath.’ The psychiatrist’s name was Garth Predergast and, inevitably, he had a wife and two children in the States.

  Robin wrote asking whether she could stay with Kerren when she came to London to do her Christmas shopping. ‘I could meet Adam and the three of us could have a grand reunion. Perhaps we could go to Jan’s restaurant.’ The weather turned cold towards the end of November and she wrote, ‘It mustn’t snow, it mustn’t! I couldn’t bear it if I couldn’t escape for a few days before Christmas.’

  There was a sharp frosty spell in the first week of December and for a day and a night the Serpentine was frozen, but the ice was thin and there were notices forbidding skating. On the Wednesday, not long after Kerren had walked across the park, on a magical evening when the air was clear and the frost-rimed trees were twisted in fantastic outlines like figures in a Gothic fairy story, Dilys skated right to the centre of the lake where the ice cracked beneath her and she drowned without anyone being aware of her peril. The park attendant reported at the inquest that anyone could see that the ice was cracking. ‘It was madness!’ There seemed very little else to be said and the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  The doors at the back of the altar opened silently, and behind him the cousin’s wife gave a little sighing ‘Aaah!’ The coffin slid back noiselessly and the doors closed again. It was all very discreet. And Dilys, when one came to think about it, had been very discreet, too. Accidental death: nothing to trouble anyone. She had, after all, done more stupid things in her brief life than skate on thin ice. Adam bowed his head, feeling the salt taste of tears in his mouth. His grief was overwhelming. He had been unable to react in what he considered to be a normal way when Alison killed herself; but now it seemed that emotion was ready for release and in the days that followed Dilys’s death he had felt everything, shock, horror, compassion, guilt, desolation. Dilys’s doctor had been concerned at the effect that her death had had on him.

  ‘My dear chap! You mustn’t take it like this. There was nothing you could have done. In a year she would have been incurably insane. It was better this way.’

  ‘But she knew.’ Adam tried to break through the smooth professional shield. ‘She knew it was happening. It must have been ghastly for her. And she was alone.’

  ‘I doubt if she felt things as sharply as you imagine. These people often lack the capacity for deep feeling.’

  But Adam could not comfort himself so easily. He had walked up and down his room night after night thinking of her, vividly aware of what she must have suffered as her world began to shift out of focus. She had started on the journey that she feared, the journey to Fish Square, Candle Lane and Meat Market. He cried for her. Or for Alison. He scarcely knew which. But not for the children; perhaps he would never be able to cry for them.

  There was movement around him. He got slowly to his feet. The few mourners stood in the porch, thanking the minister, holding their coats tight around them, making a brief inspection of the wreaths.

  ‘Someone bought one for Sam, thank goodness! I quite forgot.’

  ‘My dear! They must have delivered ours overnight, the flowers are fading. I shall never go there again!’

  ‘The Nuffield Club workers. How very nice!’

  ‘You are making a list, Leslie? We shall have to send cards.’

  Adam backed away and managed to leave the graveyard without being drawn into the little group. Kerren was not there. He had persuaded her to stay away, knowing that the service would bring back memories of Peter’s funeral. They had not talked much about Dilys’s death. To Kerren it was one with the deaths of Peter and Beatie, the senseless elimination of another gallant spirit. Adam kept his own counsel.

  He walked down the Bayswater Road and went into the park. The light had that lovely clarity of winter sun that outlines everything sharply but does not dazzle; there was nothing to hurt the eye or trouble the senses. The bare trees stood black against the pearl-grey sky. There was more of eternity in winter than in any other season; none of the up-thrust surge of spring, the summer’s unease, the flamboyant decline of autumn; winter was stillness, acceptance without question, final peace.

  It was late afternoon and soon there was a smoky winter sunset in which orange and mauve and rose fused into one another, a gradual gradation of colour, finally easing out into heliotrope. Away to the east, the sky was already a deep blue arc touched only at the periphery by a plume of rose which seemed more than anything else to emphasize the coldness of the air.

  The lights came on in one of the tall buildings outlined against the sky, the zig-zag of fire escapes making it look like a great battleship sailing the sky. The neon lights looked sickly against the sunset. Adam stood for a moment or two on the bridge, looking at the scene, feeling cold, empty, but strangely free. Then he went back to his flat where he had left one or two manuscripts and worked until after midnight.

  He did not get in touch with Kerren that week and he did not think much about her; yet she seemed more inextricably a part of him than she had ever been. His previous attempts to woo her seemed superficial and a little boorish and he was ashamed of this. He was glad that she had rebuffed him.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Robin was greatly affected by her meeting with Adam. Kerren was working until half-past seven in the evening and Adam met Robin at the Martinez for a drink. The sight of him, looking unfamiliar in civilian clothes, made her ill at ease at first, but this soon passed and she felt the clutter of the last two years slipping away.

  ‘I feel I should call you “sir”,’ she said.

  ‘Why? You always resented it at the time.’

  ‘Did I show it?’

  ‘Indeed you did! You always said it in a light, mocking way as though it was grossly inappropriate – a duchess deferring to one of her menials. And you always brought it out several times when we had made a particularly bad mistake.’ He mimicked her, ‘ “Oh sir! It’s raining, sir.” ’ He got the surprised lift to the voice on the word ‘raining’ to perfection. ‘ “What can have happened to that sun you forecast, sir?” ’

  Robin applauded delightedly. ‘I was a little bitch, wasn’t I? Did you care greatly?’

  ‘No. But poor Corder writhed with agony.’

  ‘Did you know he married someone called the Honourable Arabella Witherspoon? There was a picture in The Tatler. Her veil had blown right across his face. Poor old Corder! Out-manreuvred even on his wedding day.’

  This turn of the subject was a mistake, she thought; the way was now open for him to enquire about Clyde and Terence. But to her relief he asked if she knew what had become of Maggie, who had been his bête noir.

  Now that the awkward moment had passe
d, she began to feel that she would like to confide in him as she had so often when they were on night duty together. You were safe with Adam. ‘He’s the one man you could make a fool of yourself with at night and it wouldn’t be all over the wardroom the next day,’ Beatie had once said.

  They ordered more drinks. Adam enjoyed himself in Robin’s company. He had always had an affection for her. She had been intensely loyal; although she never failed to comment on one’s mistakes she always took good care to cover up whenever it was necessary. He hoped that she would carve out some kind of life for herself; but her implements were sharp and now there were hard lines around her mouth and between her eyes. He shivered inwardly for Clyde.

  ‘Tell me about the publishing business,’ she was saying. ‘Kerren tells me she reads manuscripts for you.’

  Adam could imagine how Kerren would have exaggerated on that score. He nodded his head.

  ‘She must be a great help to you.’

  He realized, looking at her, that she was perfectly sincere and his heart warmed to her; however badly she might manage her own life, she would always be a staunch friend. Because of his new feeling of commitment to Kerren, he felt a certain responsibility for Robin. He was not a man who believed that a woman should set aside her own friends when she married.

  ‘And what about you?’ he asked.

  It came out easily, just at the right moment, and she told him about herself. Fortunately there was not much for him to do but listen with some degree of sympathy, she was badly in need of a masculine shoulder to weep on. Later they met Kerren for dinner and the three of them spent an enjoyable evening together.

  Robin’s advent, however, had an unsettling effect on Kerren. Robin carried them all back to the past and this put the present a little out of focus. Adam was not much affected by this; now that he had made up his mind the future seemed to him more secure, no longer at the mercy of minutes, hours and days. Kerren was by no means so calm. She sensed some change in his attitude to her and quite suddenly she panicked. She was not at all sure that she wanted to change her way of life. Her marriage to Peter had been little more than a honeymoon and there had been no time for the ties between them to grow strong and begin to chafe. Marriage in peace-time would be the real thing; the same face at breakfast every morning, the innumerable demands on one’s time and attention and the more overbearing physical demands. She thought a lot about the small invasions of the body’s privacy that she must suffer and the more subtle penetrations of the spirit’s reserve. She thought of all the endless readjustments they would have to make. One of them would have to give more than the other: she did not want it to be her, but she could not bear the thought that Adam should give more. And suppose at the end of it all, the spring ran dry. What then?

  She wished that Robin would stay in London, standing between them, until she was more sure of herself; at least until she had finally mastered the uneasiness she still felt about Alison. Had Alison been prepared to give more?

  But the days passed quickly. Towards the end of the week they were to have a meal at Jan’s restaurant. This had been Robin’s idea and had been arranged before she came to London. Now she regretted having done this. She had not foreseen how difficult it would be to meet Jan in front of Adam. She hoped the evening would pass without any display of untoward interest on his part.

  This, in fact, seemed likely to happen. Jan appeared to be more interested in Adam than in anyone else. Adam had not been to Jugoslavia, but he knew several Eastern European countries and challenged Jan’s assertion that none of them could possibly compare with Jugoslavia. They enjoyed arguing from their entrenched positions. Neither would give an inch and at times it seemed to the two women that a disastrous enmity was developing between them; they would have been very surprised had they realized that they were in fact witnessing the beginning of a friendship.

  Jan had put on a very good meal with complete disregard for the five shilling limit. ‘You will be my guests,’ he had insisted. The women had murmured protests, but left it to Adam to argue this out with him at the end of the evening.

  Robin, who had started the evening with one of her upset stomachs, was so relieved at having Jan’s attention completely diverted from her that she began to enjoy the meal. She also began to feel quite detached from Jan. His foreign intensity, his tendency to raise his voice and gesticulate when he was arguing, seemed to her uncouth. The gold tooth bothered her.

  The restaurant seemed a poor little place, just one better than a pull-in for cabmen. She accepted the fastidious cleanness without applauding the effort that achieved it; but she noted the shabby tables, the odd assortment of chairs, the holes in the linoleum, the frayed tablecloths, the bad ventilation. The state of the decorations did not arouse her interest; dilapidation of this kind was more or less uniform throughout the country – a bright splash of paint would offend the eyes grown used to grey and black. Some colour there was, however; Kerren was wearing a cherry-coloured woollen dress which suited her admirably. Kerren, in fact, had become very attractive. Her laughter was less uncontrolled although it still came readily enough; when she was serious she looked less like a furious goblin than in the days when she sat on her bunk engrossed in a letter from Peter. There was a new depth in her repose. Whatever doubts Kerren herself might have, the fact that she was in love was revealed with great certainty to the observer. Robin felt a twist of pain in her breast. She turned away, surveying the other diners while she recovered her poise.

  There were only a few of them now, it was getting late. A soldier and his girl friend hunched over their coffee, knees touching; two men silently disposing of something that looked like treacle tart; a woman on her own gazing blankly into space, the spiral of smoke from her cigarette emphasizing her loneliness; a man with a long face, so miserable as to be almost comic, eating very slowly as though at each bite he touched a nerve in a bad tooth: not a prosperous clientèle.

  ‘Do these people come regularly?’ she asked Kerren.

  ‘Some of them. The soldier and his girl are newcomers, so is the melancholy gent.’

  The melancholy gent at this moment reached for the salt cellar and Robin noticed that he wore a gold ring with a big flashy stone on the middle finger of his right hand. It took him out of the category in which she had placed him – minor bank official; she toyed with the idea of third-rate musician or even artist, and was suddenly reminded of Dilys.

  ‘Has Dilys finished that mural yet?’ she asked.

  By the time they had finished telling her about Dilys, the soldier and his girl friend had gone and the two men were settling their bill.

  ‘How dreadful!’ Robin exclaimed. ‘I shan’t want to walk through the park now.’

  She thought of the other reason why she remembered the park with misgivings and wished that Clyde was here instead of Jan. She was desperately tired of feeling guilty.

  ‘When they have gone, we will have a real party!’ Jan promised.

  The restaurant was now closed to new arrivals; Jan limped across to draw the heavy curtains over the windows and door. The solitary woman took the hint, finished her coffee, and paid her bill. The pimply waiter locked the door after her, just to emphasize the message. The man with the sore mouth was making slow progress; he pondered over the choice of sweets and Kerren whispered to Robin, ‘Not treacle tart, I hope. He’ll be here all night.’

  Jacob came to greet them, his manner a little sour because the cook had been particularly offensive. He refused to have a drink with them, having made up his mind that he was not wanted.

  After he had departed, the melancholy man opted for cheese and biscuits; he ate very slowly, examining each portion of cheese with dyspeptic gloom before consigning it to his mouth. As he reached for the butter knife the ring caught the light and the stone glittered. They found themselves watching him. He was dressed in a nondescript grey suit; it was clean enough, not noticeably shiny at the elbows, and yet there was something impoverished about him as though he had suf
feerd deprivations as a child. The white collar was limp, the edges curled and slightly soiled. Robin fancied she could smell him.

  ‘We could go back to my flat,’ Adam offered.

  ‘I have to lock up,’ Jan said. ‘The kitchen staff will have gone now.’

  There remained only the pimply waiter leaning against the wall.

  ‘He’s sure to have coffee,’ Kerren prophesied.

  Conversation dwindled. Somewhere below there was the rumble of an underground train. There was no sound from the street, the restaurant was in a cul-de-sac.

  Jan said, ‘We will have more coffee.’ He limped into the kitchen.

  Someone tried the door of the restaurant, persuasively shaking the handle. The pimply waiter yawned and said to no one in particular, ‘Some hopes they’ve got!’ The handle went on rattling, not loudly, but persistently. The pimply waiter tittered and rubbed his shoulders against the wall.

  The melancholy man spoke. ‘We’ll have them in, shall we?’

  For a moment they were all so startled that the words hardly registered; it was as though a figure at Madame Tussaud’s had spoken. He was half-way across the room, capable it seemed of very swift movement, before the pimply waiter started off towards him.